Armed with a six-figure budget and fake snow flown in from Canada, developer Ben Carter has hired a team of Christmas professionals to turn his empty storefronts into a winter wonderland for the holiday season.
Called “Holiday Windows on Broughton Street,” the project is designed to give a boost to the retail sector downtown and serve as a general gesture of goodwill toward the city as he continues his multi-million dollar plan to return Broughton Street to 100 percent occupancy.
“The goal is to bring a festive atmosphere to Broughton Street so that residents and visitors will want to come out and shop, eat and play,” said Carter in a press release.
Carter hired part-time resident Charles Taylor to spearhead the effort. Taylor, as a visual merchandising manager for 20 years, decorated the famed holiday windows at Macy’s flagship store on 34th Street in New York City.
“When you see the scale of the windows that we did on Broughton, it is comparative to the windows in size at Macy’s,” said Taylor. “The biggest difference is since we are doing this as a gift to the city, we don’t have any merchandise … it’s just to make people’s holidays happy.”
Taylor led a team of 11 people working around the clock through November to finish in time for Thanksgiving, purchasing props, décor and other glitz at the large merchandising mart in Atlanta.
The windows’ themes, said Taylor, are based on Christmas carols, including “Silver Bells, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” Taylor’s personal favorite at 300 W. Broughton St.
Taylor said he did, at one point, run out of fake snow and had to get some flown directly from Canada.
“Fake snow is hard to come by around here,” he said, laughing. “What happens is after you get into November, suppliers of Christmas decorations run out — they don’t keep it in stock.”
As part of the project, several local charities were given window space to decorate and showcase their organizations, including Savannah Center for the Blind and Low Vision, Visit Savannah Foundation, Humane Society, Savannah Philharmonic, Moses Jackson Community Center and The Bag Lady.
The window for the Savannah Center for the Blind, for example, features braille on the exterior of the glass with “lots of flash, glitter and light” on the interior, according to the charity’s executive director, Lois Modell.
“I am so proud and impressed with all of our charities at what they were able to accomplish in a relatively short time and the enthusiasm that they brought to the project,” said Taylor.
In addition to the windows, Carter’s team has received city approval to install overhead industrial strand lights down the length of the street through December. Working with the Savannah Downtown Business Association, the standing planters Carter installed over the summer are now filled with miniature conifers. On the lamp posts, bows and garlands adorn each pole.
Carter has bought close to 40 properties along the Broughton corridor and is restoring many of the original building facades to lure brand-name retailers and transform the strip into a top shopping destination.
Retailers J. Crew and Palm Avenue have opened this year, and more leases are under negotiation. Body care store L’Occitane, another Carter lease, opened Friday.
Taylor said the windows and street decorations demonstrate the transformation taking place on Broughton.
“A great thing about this project is it shows the amazing potential for Broughton Street to be like the shining shopping destination it was 40 years ago,” he said.